Adult and Youni Pfeople. October, 1913. 
 
 Degradation of Ignorance in 
 Mexico. 
 
 BY DR. G. B. WINTON. 
 
 Ignorance the Mother of Evil. 
 
 In all nations moral conditions are intimate¬ 
 ly bound up with intellectual life. Ignorant 
 men may be good, abd educated men bad; but 
 taking whole nations into account, ignorance 
 is the mother of evil. This is because ig¬ 
 norance means weakness, and weakness ex¬ 
 poses humanity to moral deterioration as well 
 as to many other evils. This is especially true 
 in regard to social life. The community runs 
 more of risk in its morals by living in igno¬ 
 rance than does the individual. Social evils 
 are those that man perpetuates on man and 
 woman. Professor Ross has distinguished be¬ 
 tween vice, the wrong a man commits against 
 himself, and sin, the evil that he does to his 
 fellows. Using the words in this Sense, it is 
 ’ easy to see how sin will abound where men 
 are helpless through ignorance. Their help¬ 
 lessness makes them easy victims both of de¬ 
 signing men and of adverse conditions. Even 
 vice increases when artificially fomented. The 
 crowded tenement, for example, has a direct 
 bearing upon the morals of the people who live 
 
in the slum districts. It is naturally impossi¬ 
 ble to parcel out responsibility in matters cf 
 this kind. No adverse conditions excuse a 
 man or a people from the struggle heavier and 
 more hopeless though it should be. 
 
 Causes of Ignorance in Mexico. 
 
 In Mexico intellectual limitations have sent 
 down deep and widespread roots. There vas a 
 sort of conspiracy of influences to keep the 
 bulk of the people of that land in ignorance. 
 The landowners preferred to deal with an ig¬ 
 norant clientage, because such people are eas¬ 
 ier to exploit. So of the mining interests. 
 The ignorant peon was helpless. He could not 
 combine with his fellows. He could not de¬ 
 fend his rights against crooked bookkeeping 
 or unfavorable conditions of labor. He was a 
 hand, and nothing more. Employers therefore 
 found pretexts for keeping the working people 
 in ignorance. 
 
 Church Did Not Befriend Education. 
 
 Church leaders also gradually reached the 
 attitude of discouraging the education of the 
 people. They did not really need to know 
 much, so it was argued. Their land smiled 
 with plenty. The climate made small demands 
 in the matter of clothes and houses. Their 
 spiritual advisers assumed full responsibility 
 in regard to their future welfare. The Spanish 
 government was equally paternal in taking en¬ 
 tire charge of their present interests. Why, 
 then, should they “heat their heads,” as the 
 Spanish idiom puts it, in a struggle for educa- 
 
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lion, foi- infcrmation, for intellectual growth? 
 There were practically no books, for the ‘Index 
 Expurgatorius” suppressed them. There were 
 few papers, because the government exercised 
 a severe censorship. There were no public 
 schools-—no demand for them, no houses, no 
 teachers, no money provided. The country 
 floated gently down the stream of years in con¬ 
 tented ignorance. Eighty per cent and more 
 of its people are illiterate. There were a few 
 schools for the children of the rich, and the 
 government endowed professional academies 
 and even supplied scholarships for foreign 
 study. The Church had seminaries for its 
 priests and occasional parochial schools of a 
 primitive order for its parishioners’ children. 
 The catechism by rote and something of the. 
 “Lives of the Saints” comprised the curriculum 
 of these schools. They did not, for the most 
 part, rise even to the dignity of primary 
 schools. Neither master nor parents thought 
 it important that the children should learn to 
 read. Of course the children fell in with this 
 kind of public sentiment willingly enough. 
 
 Evil Consequence,s. 
 
 Many and varied consequences can be traced 
 to this state of contented ignorance. It went 
 on for centuries. The social customs which 
 grew out of it had time to petrify. It is the 
 tendency of custom to grow into law, especially 
 among a people dependent upon tradition and 
 on word-of-mouth precepts for its intellectual 
 life. Some of the traditions that came to be 
 
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handed down were far from helpful and elevat¬ 
 ing when translated into practice. There are 
 conditions in Mexican society yet which shock 
 the observer but which do not shock the Mexi¬ 
 cans. They are used to them. They see in 
 them practices sanctioned by custom running 
 back beyond the memory of their fathers. 
 Naturally they reason that what has been done 
 so long cannot be much amiss. 
 
 Want of Moral Sanctio.xs. 
 
 Many of these objectionable practices might 
 have been remedied had the Church supplied 
 a moral sanction to life. But gradually the 
 religious life of the people, guided wholly by 
 the Roman Catholic Church, came to divorce 
 Itself from morals. The demands w'hich Ca¬ 
 tholicism made could be met without regard 
 to the spiritual and ethical life. They were 
 mostly compliance with rites and ceremonies, 
 Implicit obedience to the priest, and a spirit of 
 hearty intolerance for all dissent. None of 
 these have to do with morals. Hence, humanly 
 speaking, a man could be as immoral as he 
 liked and remain a good Catholic. 
 
 Foreign Department Woman’s Missionary Council, 
 M. B. Church, South. 810 Broadway, 
 Nashville, Tenn. 
 
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